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thomas davison

Of course hanging won't end all murders - but it will make criminals afraid to carry guns
By Peter Hitchens
PUBLISHED: 22:00, 22 September 2012 | UPDATED: 01:25, 23 September 2012

..Parliament sentenced hundreds of innocent people to death when it arrogantly abolished hanging in 1965. Many of those innocent people have yet to meet their killers, but that meeting will inevitably come.

Hundreds more, also thanks to the smugness of our sheltered power elite, will instead be horribly, terrifyingly injured.

But � because our medical skills have grown while our common sense has shrunk � they will survive to live damaged, darkened lives.

Tragic: The shooting of Pcs Fiona Bone, 32, and Nicola Hughes, 23, in Manchester may well bring a discussion of the death penalty to the fore
On the long list of Parliament�s victims, both dead and wounded, are many police officers. Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes, may they rest in peace, are just the latest.

Nobody can really claim to be surprised by this. In August 1966, a few months after the death penalty was got rid of, three police officers were murdered close to Wormwood Scrubs Prison.
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Our once-peaceful country was so shocked that a memorial service was held in Westminster Abbey for the three � Geoffrey Fox, Stanley Wombwell and Christopher Head.

But the Prince of Liberal Smugness, the then Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, airily dismissed calls for a return of the gallows. �I will not change my policy in the shadow of recent events, however horrible,� he said, in a statement of such bone-headed obstinacy that it ought to be carved on his tombstone.

If the murder of three policemen by an armed gang of crooks, months after hanging was abolished for that very offence, was not a reason to change a policy, then what would change his mind? The answer was that nothing would.

Like all such people, he knew he was right, and �civilised� � and neither the facts nor common sense would change what he pleased to call his mind.
Now, after the Manchester killings, there has been an attempt to divert us into an argument about arming the police. Almost every account of these deaths, rather oddly, stressed that the two officers were unarmed.

Upset: Following the tragic shootings of two female police officers, could hanging scare criminals from carrying guns?
Why? There�s no suggestion that Fiona Bone or Nicola Hughes would have been safer if they had been armed. Do we want to turn the police into executioners? In any case, the police of this country are armed, and have been for years.

Not all of them carry weapons, but the proud boast of this country in my childhood, that we were the only major nation whose police did not carry guns, long ago ceased to be true.

We weren�t asked about it. But then again, we weren�t asked about abolishing the death penalty. No political party ever put that policy in its manifesto. To this day it has not been properly discussed.

Few people understand that supporters of the gallows never pretended it would deter all murders. They believed it deterred criminals from carrying lethal weapons.

We have in fact had two experiments to see if this is so. The death penalty was suspended in this country for much of 1948, while Parliament debated (and rejected) its abolition. It was suspended again from August 1955 to March 1957, during a similar debate. After 1957 the penalty was much weaker, though it still protected police officers.

Colin Greenwood, a retired policeman, studied the statistics and found a marked leap in violent and armed offences during 1948, followed by a return to the previous level. There was another rise in 1956-57, followed by a slight fall. There was a third significant rise in the mid-Sixties, which has continued more or less ever since.

The carrying and use of guns and knives by criminals just grows and grows. Jay Whiston, whose dreadful death I mentioned last week, is one victim of this. The Manchester police officers are two more.

But these are the cases we all hear about. Far, far more common are dreadful events in which heroic doctors and nurses save the lives of people who would undoubtedly have died of comparable wounds 50 years ago.

Last week, in my beautiful, civilised home town, Oxford, two men were jailed for attacking Kirk Smith in his home, in a petty, moronic robbery � of �20 and two phones.

Abdul Adan, 21, was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years (in reality he will serve half that) for stabbing Mr Smith four times, after first smashing his nose. Mr Smith�s wounds were appalling. They �bared his intestines�, as the court report puts it. Adan�s accomplice, Michael Edwards, 25, got three-and-a-half years, which of course he will not serve in full.

Did these assailants care whether they killed him? Did they, in fact, fear the law at all? How many such crimes have been and will be committed in our supposedly civilised, liberal country this year? More than you think.

Are any of us safe in our homes, or on the streets, or on late-night buses and trains, from people such as this? Will anything be done to put it right?

You know the answer.

And people wonder why I despise politicians and all their works.